I also found it disappointing — not as a near-billion-dollar grosser, but as a movie purported to be both action and science fiction. It’s too inert for the former and not imaginative enough for the latter. The title references a brutal annual competition staged by the government of a dystopian future, of which this film’s […]
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Posted inArts & Culture
Kill List
The less you know beforehand, the better, but know that Jay (Neil Maskell, Atonement, Doghouse) is stricken by immense stress. Struggling under the grips of the recession has placed his marriage to Shel (MyAnna Buring, The Descent, The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn — Part 1) on shaky ground, and their verbal disagreements dampen the spirits […]
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Peter Gabriel: Secret World Live
Secret World finds the Genesis founder fully entrenched in his world-music phase — still ongoing today — but still playing his solo hits, such as the never-not-excellent “Solsbury Hill” and the John Cusack’s boom box-co-opted “In Your Eyes,” which becomes an epic encore. All are sung with passion, with backup (and occasional duet duties, i.e. […]
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It’s a TV-on-DVD summer spectacular!
Breaking Bad: The Complete Fourth Season If Breaking Bad‘s current fifth and final season goes south (not bloody likely), at least season four delivers a climax that could have serves as a satisfying serious closer, were it not renewed. But it was, and no wonder: Bryan Cranston may have the tube’s richest character arc, as […]
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Above Suspicion: Set 1
Emetophobes may wish to shield their eyes in the opening scenes of the pilot, as rookie Detective Constable Anna Travis (the magnetic Kelly Reilly, Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows) has trouble getting used to the job’s sights and smells when it comes to corpses. She eventually proves useful elsewhere, when her superior, the brusque […]
Posted inMusic
The Last Challenge / The Hanging Tree
First, 1967’s The Last Challenge features the late Chad Everett (TV’s Medical Center) as Lot McGuire, a cocky quick draw who rolls into town, and Marshal Blaine (Glenn Ford, hangdog as ever) not only takes offense to that, but tries to run the jerk right back out. Coming between them is a saloon girl — […]
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No Mercy
Tired of living with corpses, police academy professor and top medical examiner Kang leaves to go start a new life with his daughter. That’s postponed a bit when a woman’s body is discovered washed up seaside, fully nude. All four of her limbs have been cut off, but remain there except for one arm missing […]
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Michael / Silver Tongues
Michael is no comedy, however, and refers to a balding, chubby, nerdy outcast who keeps a 10-year-old captive in his basement. Michael is more than a mere kidnapper: He’s a pedophile. The subject matter alone will keep many from giving the German-language film a try, but his most devilish acts of evil thankfully go unseen. […]
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A Three Stooges Celebration
That means they more or less hold the same contents — namely, four or five shorts (i.e. “Disorder in the Court” and “Sing a Song of Six Pants”) and many more of the seven-minute New Three Stooges cartoons from the mid-’60s, with live-action wraparound intros and outros that show how Moe and Larry had aged […]
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Total Recall: Mind-Bending Edition
Join him, won’t you? Before the Colin Farrell/Kate Beckinsale remake opens next week, take a return trip to the 1990 blockbuster with Lionsgate’s new “Mind-Bending Edition” on Blu-ray. And if you’ve never seen the sci-fi hit, then — to quote another character — “Get ready for a surprise!” (Oh, there are more classic lines to […]